Seven Million Germans from Soviet Zone a Problem in West

Grey River Argus, 24 February 1949, Page 5

Seven Million Germans from Soviet Zone a Problem in West

(Rec. 8.50) LONDON, Feb. 23 “The Times” correspondent at Hamburg says that representatives of the World Council of Churches who have begun a three-day inquiry in Hamburg into the possibility of easing the German refugee problem were told yesterday by Doctor Eugen Gerstenmaier, of the German Evangelical Churches’ Welfare Bureau that seven million Germans had cither been driven or had fled into lhe three Western zones in under three years. The possibility of resettling the refugees as small farmers was extremely limited, he said. Emigration, he said, would provide a remedy provided that whole groups and suitable families were included, but mass emigration from Europe, he thought, would not be possible for a decade.